Tuesday, January 16, 2007

A Real Weiner

A few years back, the Juniper Park Civic Association, along with other neighborhood groups throughout western Queens and northern Brooklyn, realized that Manhattan Rep. Jerrold Nadler's scheme to build an intermodal truck facility on their border would be extremely detrimental to the surrounding communities. They put pressure on Mayor Bloomberg and defeated the Cross Harbor Freight Tunnel plan. Or so they thought...

Since rail freight would be transferred to trucks in Queens, truck traffic would increase on Queens roads and bridges. Commodity truck volumes would increase as much as 41 percent in the Queens-Midtown Tunnel, for example, as well as on major highways.Queens newspapers focused on the loss of 44 to 52 businesses due to expansion of the West Maspeth rail yards, with possible loss of 1,200 to 1,400 jobs.. The tunnel would also attract additional trucks to the neighborhood. The Queens Chronicle quoted Gary Giordano, district manager of Community Board 5, saying that, "There are concerns with regard to increased truck traffic in that Maspeth industrial area. That's a big concern, as well as the pollution associated with that."

The West Maspeth facility is proposed for an industrial site about four blocks south of the interchange between the LIE and the BQE. Although the site is close to two major highways, many access routes pass through residential neighborhoods. Based on the estimates of the rail tunnel's capacity, traffic to and from the site could reach thousands of truck trips per day.

"This project is intended to decrease truck congestion across area bridge crossings and provide the New York City metro area with more diversified commercial shipping options. However, its more localized effects on Maspeth, Queens and the other areas surrounding the proposed new rail yard would be dramatic. In the current preferred plan, Maspeth Creek and part of Newtown Creek would be entirely filled in, and would serve as the site for the new rail yard which would serve as the freight line’s endpoint."

"Newtown Creek has lost nearly all of its wetlands area, and strikingly little natural space remains on the Creek and its tributaries. The New York Harbor area has lost 75-80% of its historical wetlands, and nearly all of the 224,000 acres that previously existed in its urban core. If anything, future efforts should be geared towards restoring this vital lost habitat, not further infringing upon our waterways."

"The plan also comes at a time when attention is being turned back to the Newtown Creek. New York must find ways to return to its waterfront, using its waterfront for water-related activities and ensuring community access to the Creek. The proposed rail yard would not only deny the community access to the Creek, it would deny the community the Creek itself."

He is completely misinformed about the area's railroading situation. If he did his research, by discussing this with the local freight railroad, he would see that a tunnel is not required. The whole rail infrastructure he asks for is already in place, via the Hell Gate Bridge route.

Thanks everyone for explaining this to me. I was looking at it from the perspective of the potential benefits of keeping traffic out of Manhattan. But given that I live only a stone's throw from West Maspeth rail yards, this raises all sorts of new issues.

We should never have let our national rail system get dismantled by the oil/gas and car lobby. Europe didn't! We used to have effiecient (non intrusive) off loading sites properly located i.e. the Sunnyside Yards, West Side Yards etc. You used to ship goods nationally (long distance) on trains, then smaller (non congesting) trucks delivered them to stores etc. Now we have tandem-truck monsters that choke up our streets, waterfonts and our lungs (Take a good look at College Point for a future example)! What's going to happen when a collision causes a toxic spill in a residental area? It'll kill fish, wildlife, maybe even people. But let's go ahead and deck all our rail yards folks, or rip them up. Sometimes I think that the real "terrorists" are our elected officials!

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